Well, a second run-in with the latte frother (mostly at the behest of my mom, who wanted a frou-froo coffee) turned out much better. Apparently the key is to not try to froth shit in a normal mug. Rather, use the uber-tall kind (of which I have many, for some completely unfathomable reason). I'm now drinking my second frothy Ovaltine (yeah, take that Senior Citizen Nation!) and it's quite tasty. (Mmm... foamy!)

So I'm sitting here, while it's all gloomy and 7pm-grey sky out, in a peasant dress and my new Hip-Huggers Of Great Sluttiness That My Mom Urged Me To Buy (backstory a little further down) and thinking very angry thoughts about my manager. (Note : not my teamlead, who I've always thought was awesome and who's currently out of the country anyway. My manager I never got to know as an intern, and has not impressed me any since I've been back as A Real Employee.)

Now, I realize it's New Year's Eve day, so every employee on the planet is annoyed with their management if they have to work, just because everyone wants to be out, prepping for whatever party they're joining later this evening. I'm going to ask for a little faith here and say that I'm not. Honestly. I was hanging out just last night with a bunch of people who were griping about having to work on New Year's Day (at restaurants) and how they should just be closed. I remember thinking "...if there's any day that I wouldn't want to cook, it'd be New Year's Day. Stop being unreasonable. It goes with the job." That said, I am annoyed about how long I was there today. And now I'll tell you why.

While the prospect of sticking out the full day of work (to 7pm EST, on this particular day) wouldn't have irked me particularly, my teamlead, prior to hopping his plane out of the country told me, as I was the one holding down the fort late, had given me fairly clear instructions on hours to keep, limits to draw, etc. Obviously, despite our having told the manager this, that wasn't enough. Fine. He's the manager, he can make the calls. And that would have been perfectly okay, had he actually put his foot down and made a fucking decision.

Honestly. I understand that he's a manager with an eye for territory and aspirations of grandeur. He's under pressure. He cringes at the idea of possible sources of criticism the way I cringe thinking of emacs users. But from my point of view, being a manager means Directing, it means either offering a set path, a firm decision, or it means making clear a goal or stance, and letting your employees worry about the specifics. Both of these things require that the manager make up his mind about his priorities. This, in my estimation, was my manager's failing, and seems to be his weakness generally.

The way I see it, this afternoon he had two worries :

-> Keeping his employees (i.e. just me) happy by letting them off the hook earlier
-> Keeping the people we support happy (thereby not getting any complaints which might garner him attention from the higher-ups) by being there until our normal closing hours

Clearly these two goals can not both be met. I mean, that just seems fucking obvious to me. Now, our teamlead had opted for keeping the team happy by telling me "if it's stupidly slow, just leave". And that was fine. Our manager, being our team's link between our little world and the world of the people who pay our salaries, would have been completely in his right so say "look, I know it's the 31st, but people might need you, so you have to stay the full time". And that would have been okay too. (I mean that. I feel really guilty when I skip out on work. I would have been fine with staying.) What my manager actually did however, was dick around wallowing in indecision for four hours, during which time he sat in my space for half-hour stretches and yammered at me. This is frustrating simply because if he wants me stay fine, tell me, then leave so I can read my damn novel. Don't waste my time saying nothing and staring at me. It's also frustrating because he obviously hasn't decided that I shouldn't just take off. But he's not letting me go. So I sit there, still carrying the decision-making power that my teamlead has given me, but completely impotent to use it, because he hasn't decided that I can. Aaarrrrggggghh.

Anyway. Believe it or not, that's not really what I wanted to document. Yes, it was frustrating, Yes, I think he needs to rethink his leadership style, Yes, I'm getting to the point where I can barely look him in the face without just rolling my eyes and going back to my work, but what I was thinking about on the way home was actually that I was disappointed with the way I handled the situation. I mean, I didn't say anything, didn't do anything, didn't even really think anything till after. The above analysis came after about half an hour of cooling down. It just upsets me that I couldn't see that until then. I should be... I don't know, better at this somehow.

Anyway. Feeling a little burnt-out, but still kind of in the mood to hang out. I think I'll probably end up kicking around the house, maybe take a patented Lilephyte Bath Of Ridiculous Longness And Bubbles, then watch our bootleg copy of the Stepford Wives remake (look, it was a consolation gift for my mom, okay??) and go to bed or something. I'd like to hang out at chan's friend's Bohemian Fondue Night Of Great Classiness but... I don't think I have the energy tonight. It weirds me out that I seem to need so much alone-time these days. I'm going to assume it's because my subconscious thinks I need some downtime to figure stuff out. Hopefully when I'm done with all the thinking, things will get back to normal?

Right. Backstory for the Hip-Huggers Of Great Sluttiness That My Mom Urged Me To Buy. Christmas Eve Day my mom and I went to the mall, and at Guess, I found these jeans that were half-off. Being hip-huggers, I was interested. They were okay, but I felt kind of loose at the back (what with the whole "hey, if you look down the back of my jeans, you can check out my underwear!" thing; Paris Hilton, I am not), especially, as I later found out, when I'm sitting down. I'm trying to break in a little wear, so they don't ride down as much when I sit. It just cracks me up through the whole ordeal my mom is trying to convince me to buy them (probably because they're fashionable, and I'm frumpy) and that they fit, I'm just being prudish. Moms.